


Carving Out A Peace

by Ghostinthehouse



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blood and Injury, But not with Aziraphale and Crowley, Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Discussion of wars and dying, Dissociation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Sex, Ligur Lives (Good Omens), Mentioned Dagon/Beelzebub (Good Omens), Mentioned Gabriel (Good Omens), Mentioned Gabriel/Beelzebub (Good Omens), Mentioned Sandalphon, Mentioned The Them (Good Omens), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Swordfighting, The Night After the Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Vomiting, Wing Grooming, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 18,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23823847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: Michael and Adam strike a deal after ArmageddonIt turns into a sort of friendship - and a chance to healChapter 25Raphael shrugged. "It is something I need to be able to do, but it is a duty, not a pleasure. I have found a balance between the two that works for me."Michael quirked a tiny smile. "Mostly because I will drag you away for downtime when necessary, little sib. Admit it."Raphael just grinned, wide and open. "And I will protest every step of the way. You know it."
Relationships: Anathema Device & Adam Young, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Brian & Pepper & Wensleydale & Adam Young (Good Omens), Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens), Ligur & Michael (Good Omens), Michael & Adam Young (Good Omens), Michael & Brian (Good Omens), Michael & Pepper (Good Omens), Michael & Raphael (Good Omens), Michael & Satan | Lucifer (Good Omens)
Comments: 152
Kudos: 217





	1. Last Nights

Adam Young spends the night after Armageddon didn't happen lying sleepless in his bed, blood-red eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, the weight of Dog's head on his knee his only anchor in a sea of fix-fix-fix.

There's a whisper of moving air and a whisper of power, and a woman is standing at the foot of his bed in an off-white suit, her hair pinned perfectly up on her head, looking at him.

Adam sits up and looks back at her, one hand on Dog's back to quell the near-silent growl. "What do you want, I'm busy."

"You're putting things back," she says. "Bringing people back."

"They didn't ask for the world to end. I'm-" he swallows, and for a moment he looks no more than a tired, sad, child, "fixing what I broke. S'only right, really."

She folds her hands and swallows. "There was a...an acquaintance...of mine destroyed in all this. But not by you. Are you bringing him back?"

Adam's eyes start to glow as he looks through her somehow. "I could," he says, "but it'll cost you. I want the ones who helped me safe. All of them. He don't get to come back jus' to threaten them again."

She looks up for a long moment, in silence. Finally she says, "I can't promise that. There will be infighting, and discorporations, and chaos, before there is order again. Something must be seen to be done."

Adam trails his fingers through Dog's fur. He knows about punishment, about paying for what you did, from ten years of mischief and its aftermath. At last, he says, "I c'n give you a day. You got until this time tomorrow night to get your punishment in, then I'm bringing back all the angels and demons that've been killed an' destroyed. I'll bring Ligur back when I do the rest of them. Deal?"

She considers that, and then nods to herself. "That will work, I believe," she says and holds out her hand.

Adam grins, and the Antichrist shakes hands on the deal with the Archangel Michael.

Michael doesn't tell anyone else about her back channel deal. She fully expects Aziraphale and Crowley to be destroyed in their punishments and then brought back by Adam, and was prepared to lose the paperwork involving their renewed existance.

But then the renegades walk away unharmed from their punishments, and everything is suddenly more complicated (more ineffable) than she had ever thought possible.

She's sitting on a comet, watching the stars go past, when her phone rings.

"Michael," Ligur says, "it's me. We need to talk."


	2. Sword Fights

Michael had intended simply to thank the Antichrist boy for restoring Ligur and leave, but when she arrived, quietly, (Gabriel might prefer dramatics, but _she_ preferred to move into position without alerting her opponents, thank you very much) she found two of the other children fighting with wooden swords. Habits from millenia of training the Host kicked in and she cleared her throat and said, "That isn't how you hold a sword."

The girl spun, wooden sword now leveled at Michael. So this was the child who had taken out War, was it? Michael had sparred with War often enough, honing her own skills against the ultimately unstoppable force, and trading sword tricks with her. War had always liked the flashy tricks best. Michael herself favoured a simple, efficient thrust, where possible.

Now she snapped her fingers and miracled herself up a duplicate of the girl's wooden sword. "You're leaving yourself open to attacks." She demonstrated with quick, light, taps. These were humans, not angels. They couldn't just put themselves back together if blows hit too hard. "If you hold it like this, instead, you're better guarded." She demonstrated the hold.

The girl copied her.

Michael only had to correct it once, before she nodded in approval. "Better." Before she knew it, she had all four of them lined up in front of her, eager to learn. They only stopped because they ran out of time.

Two of the boys ran off at once, heading home. The girl and the Antichrist lingered.

The girl said, "Do you have to wear your hair in that fancy style because you're a girl?"

"I'm a soldier," Michael answered, almost without thinking. "I wear my hair like this because it doesn't give the enemy anything to use against me."

The girl lit up. "You'll show us how to use hair against someone next time, right?"

Michael hadn't intended there to be a next time at all, but the girl seemed to be an unstoppable force in her own right. Something passed on by War in the defeat, perhaps. She said out loud, "Maybe."

"You'd better," the girl snapped, and took herself off.

"You had something to say?" the Antichrist asked Michael.

She shrugged. "I was going to thank you."

"You're welcome. But you'd best come back soon, or Pepper's likely to storm Heaven in search of that lesson."


	3. Young Lady

Walking back through Tadfield to reach the boundaries of the Antichrist's control, so she could return to Heaven without bothering him further, Michael heard a small dog bark behind her.

"You!" A human voice exclaimed. "Where do you think you're going, young lady?"

Michael pivoted neatly to face the old human, as he continued to bark demands for information that followed so closely on each other's heels that she had no time to answer in between. It rather reminded her of being debriefed by Gabriel, and her corporation settled into an at ease pose she could hold forever, feet a short distance apart, hands clasped behind her back.

When he finally wound down, she said, "I am heading to rejoin my company, as I have duties to attend to."

"I thought you lot weren't allowed off the air base. I'll be writing a letter about this, you mark my words, or my name isn't R.P. Tyler. They said we were not going to be disturbed by the likes of you."

"As a general," rule, she was about to finish, but he interrupted her again.

"Oh, you're a general are you? One of those in charge up there?"

"You could say that," the Archangel agreed.

"And what's your name, young lady? General..." he raised his eyebrows insistently.

"Michael," she said, and when he seemed to be expecting a second name, thought fast enough to add, "Angelo."

"General Angelo, you will be hearing from me."

Michael inclined her head in acknowledgement, pivoted on her heel and started away. He was a human, after all. Perhaps he would have more luck getting a reply past the Metatron from her ultimate superior than any angel left in Heaven did. A small miracle hedged her bets, causing anything he sent to a human authority about her to land on her own desk instead. There was no point causing more trouble for herself if she was going to return here, after all.

It wasn't until she was back at that desk, tucked away in Heaven, that she realised that she had, in fact decided that she was going to return, despite her earlier intentions.

Well, perhaps one more visit wouldn't hurt.


	4. Seems Shady

The smoking yard was tucked out of sight at the back of the building shared by Heaven and Hell. In a compromise carefully maintained by nobody commenting on it, it was made of dark grey concrete, like much of Hell, but kept as bare and clean as Heaven. That the bareness also prevented both sides from hiding an ambush was another of those uncommented things. A line of scuffed yellow paint ran down the centre, dividing Heaven from Hell as neatly as the escalators inside.

Michael leaned against the wall on Heaven's side of the line. Ligur had given her lessons in lurking, but she was out of practice. Heaven was too open to have anywhere to lurk, and before now, she'd had no official reason to come down to Earth often enough (or privately enough) to take her chances on doing it there. Though she supposed that if she was going to teach the War-defeating girl on a regular basis, she ought to do her lurking practice as well. At the very least, it might get her out of the village without being accosted.

Ligur lurked against the wall on Hell's side of the line, his chameleon's tail wound into the scarf she'd bought him a couple of centuries back, after Gabriel had tried (and failed) to get her demoted to Earth liaison* so he could install Sandalphon in her place as leader of the Host.

As always, she offered him a cigarette (charity was a virtue), and he stole a second (theft was a sin). Then, with their respective sins and virtues balanced out, they lit their own, because Michael wasn't fool enough to risk a demon waving potential Hellfire that close to her nose. She lit hers from her flaming dagger instead (except on days where she was feeling particularly tetchy, when she used her flaming sword instead).

"No Hastur?" she asked. Before Armageddon had been so rudely cut short, the pair had been almost inseperable.

Ligur curled a lip and puffed smoke at her. "Still screaming every time he sees a drop of water. Crawly keeps some in a plant mister, and Hastur only realised he wasn't bluffing after that bath."

Michael suppressed a shudder at the memory of _that_ demon lounging in a tub full of Holy water, any drop of which should have burned through him.

"One of these days," Ligur growled, "I'm going to find a way to make Crawly burn too. _I've_ made no promises to leave him alone."

Michael made no comment on that. She said only, "You wanted to talk."

Ligur lit his second cigarette from the stub of his first, passing the used stub up to his chameleon, which ate it with every appearance of enjoyment. "I did. Starting with how the heaven I'm here to talk to you..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Referring to the deleted 1800 bookshop opening scene, where Michael is suggested as Aziraphale's replacement


	5. Feeling Old

Adam swung his feet back and forth under the bench. "Would you have destroyed all this if I hadn't stopped it?"

Michael sat stiffly upright, hands clasped in her lap. "I would," she said quietly.

"Why?"

"I'm the leader of the Host, of Heaven's army. It's my job to make sure that the Host is prepared for battle and to lead it when my commanders decree that it is time to fight. They declared that the Great Plan required war, so I prepared for war." She flicked a very brief glance at him. "It is pleasant to be somewhere that is not a battlefield. Battlefields are never pretty, at least not after the battle has taken place. Gabriel blocked the battlefield in Heaven from general visibility, but I still have access to it."

She went there at least once a century, standing where she had stood once before, and looking out over the place where all the colour and life had bled out of Heaven alongside the corporeal and true-form fluids that bled from wounds inflicted in the fighting. The mottled mosaic that had formed from them and stained the ground forever would never fit into the white-on-white of Heaven as it was now.

She'd been at the heart of the fight. Stared into her brother's eyes and seen the hate and grief and fear there, drowning whatever sparks of love had remained to him, but not to her. Not even when she had raised her sword and fought for her very existance. For Heaven's existance. For the loss of a brother she still loved, and could never see again, unless it was over their crossed swords.

Gabriel had run the communications, back behind the main fight. For him it was a more abstract thing, a matter of tokens on a board rather than blood on your face and your sword, and beneath your feet. He wanted it finished so that he could tidy the board away. She wanted.... She wanted to lose no more friends, colleagues, family. To never have a beloved face turn on her with unexpected hate. To acquire no more scars on her heart. To have no more spaces in Heaven turned into battlefields.

If they had fought, she knew there would have been more losses and scars. And if they had fought and won, there would be no more danger. She would have bought peace with her sword. And if she had perished in the battle... Well, that would have been a kind of peace too.

"I would make a desert of the whole world," she heard herself admit quietly. This boy was impossibly easy to talk to. Lucifer used to have that knack, too, before he Fell. "if I could call it peace when everything was done."

Adam said, "Pepper wants peace too. Just - not like that."

Michael looked at him. Looked at the innocence only lightly tarnished by Death and War and Saving a world that would never acknowledge what he had done. He still had hope.

She felt, for the first time in her existance, impossibly old.


	6. Scars of Gold

"What should we call you?" Wensleydale asked, when Michael returned intending to give them another sword lesson. The youngster who had faced down Famine wasn't apparently over-enthusiastic about the actual fighting, but had a sharp mind and an eye for detail that made him an excellent spotter.

"My name is Michael," she said, not seeing any other point to the question. "Archangel Michael if you're being formal."

"Yes, but you're a grown-up and we're kids. Usually, we call adults Mr or Mrs, or so-and-so's mum or aunt or uncle..."

Michael considered that, turning the information over in her head and then filing it away. "I am the estranged sister of Adam's you're-not-my-dad. You might say I am an aunt, of sorts."

Adam grinned, swinging around on the tyre to face her. "Auntie Michael. I like it." He jumped down, landing on the ground with a crunch of dead leaves. "What's your opinion of Gabriel, Auntie Michael?"

Michael gave Adam a sideways look. "One does not comment negatively on one's commanding officer. It's bad for discipline and morale."

"Oh, you don't like him either? Cool."

Pepper snickered, twirling her wooden sword in her fingers. "He was the streak of condescension in the grey coat, right?"

"He wears a grey coat or suit, yes," Michael agreed. "And is accustomed to perceiving himself as higher authority than everyone else." She carefully did not lift a hand to knead the golden scars curving around her left eye. They weren't visible in her Earth form anyway. The end of the War had been messy, to say the least, with almost everyone on the actual battlefield injured no matter what side they fought on.

Raphael was an excellent Healer, to be fair, but xie had been stretched very thin to start with, and when Lucifer brought out his newly created fire... (It hadn't been true Hellfire then, not yet, only the base that eventually became it.) Well, xer resources weren't infinite, and this fire clung and seared into one's Grace, not just one's form. Demons nowadays didn't have any Grace left to burn, but back then... What they didn't lose in the War burned out of them in the Fall, and they carried their scars as pocks and pus rather than gold.

By the time the rest of the remaining angels had gotten out of the infirmary, Gabriel - who had come through untouched - had more or less taken charge of everything left.

Pepper grimaced. "He's a lousy commander."

"He was never built to be one, not really. Gabriel is the Messenger. He was made to repeat what he was told perfectly, without hesitation or deviation, but with as much repetition as necessary. He never needed to question why or come up with what to say until after the Fall. That was always," Michael paused, Lucifer's name like acid biting into her tongue, and then continued, "someone else's role. He expects everyone else to function the way he does, and tries to force them back into his comfort zone if they don't. It saves him from having to think for himself too much."

Brian scuffed his feet through the fallen leaves. "When you say he's not 'built to be one' does that mean some angels are?"

Michael folded her hands tightly in front of her and squared her shoulders. "Angels are designed for a purpose and that purpose always shows through, no matter what other tasks are assigned to them. Seraphim sing as they work, Cherubim get defensive very easily, Principalities protect, Thrones listen to everyone, Dominions set things up and keep them running..." She shrugged a little. "Gabriel, as I said, was designed to carry messages. I am made to fight. The angel who stood by Adam is a Principality, designed to protect - we should have seen that one coming, but his orders were to protect what is Hers from the humans."

Adam twirled the tyre, clearly thinking hard. "So you ordered him to do something and he refused? Does that make him bad, or you?"

Michael met the Antichrist's blue gaze. "A sensible commander never gives an order that they know isn't going to be obeyed. In this case, there was no apparent reason he would not obey. It was unexpected."

"I'm glad he didn't," Adam said softly. "It made a difference, just being beside me. Both of them being beside me. And you three as well," he added, looking around at his friends. "I- couldn't have done it without you."


	7. You Can Ask..

Adam looked up at Michael, his face more serious than usual. "My parents want to meet you."

Michael went very still. "Oh?"

"It isn't personal, they prefer to meet everyone I spend a lot of time with. They want to meet Anathema too."

"I see... I think. And what did you tell them about me?"

Adam fidgeted, looking down at his feet. "I said you'd found out we were related, and they assumed you were researching your family history. They think you're human - they think _I'm_ human. They don't know about..." he waved a hand vaguely towards the airbase.

"About Armageddon?" she supplied crisply, and he nodded, sagging with relief. "And this...Anathema?"

"Oh, she knows everything." Adam's face lit up with delight. "She's a witch. A real one. And she was _there_ , too."

"And have you considerately warned her not to use her Sight on me?"

"No. Should I?"

"You should."

"Oh." Adam sagged apologetically. "I guess I'll - go and do that, then. Are you going to meet with my parents?"

The last few centuries had been rather too full of paperwork and training for Armageddon to let Michael slip away very often, but before that... well, Adam wasn't the first child she had known, nor his parents the first family she had met. Some were more memorable than others. One of the more recent ones had been a farmer, with a very sharp pitchfork, and a distinct unhappiness about Michael hanging around his daughter. She hadn't been able to bring herself to disagree with him, given the circumstances, although she had continued her duties anyway. She could, she supposed, manage this. "I will talk to them."

"How 'bout now? We can pick up Anathema on the way."

Michael sighed, but didn't resist when he half dragged her down a lane to a plant-covered cotage and left her standing at the gate while he bounded up to the door with Dog at his heels.

She gathered the moment Adam told the human woman about not using her Sight, by the dark head lifting sharply to meet Michael's eyes. A hand moved in an ancient sign against evil, and this Anathema raised her eyebrows in enquiry.

Michael met the gaze and deadpanned back, "Be Not Afraid."

Anathema nodded, came briskly back down the path with Adam, and fell in beside Michael, her loose dark dress in sharp contrast to Michael's pale suit. "I don't recall seeing you at the airbase."

"I was two dimensions to the right and about six feet up," Michael replied blandly.

"Ah, so you're saying I was looking in the wrong direction."

"Something of the sort." Michael clasped her hands behind her. "His parents think I'm human, of course."

Anathema gave her a sideways look. "Of course," she said flatly.

The rest of the walk passed in silence. Michael used it to bring the backstory the old human had assumed for her to the forefront of her mind, so that everything would match up.

Adam bounced through his home gate with Dog racing ahead of him.

Michael glanced at Anathema and smiled politely. "After you."

Anathema rolled her eyes, and obliged enough to lead the way (and incidentally demonstrate what was expected in the way of manners).

Anathema smiled warmly, and shook their hands. "Anathema Device."

Michael followed suit, carefully metering her strength to a human level. "Michael Angelo."

Adam's mother smiled on hearing Michael's name. "I'm sure you've heard all the jokes on that one."

"My Mother has an unusual sense of humour," Michael agreed. "Please, just call me Michael."

"And what brings you here?" Adam's father offered them chairs. In the background, Adam shifted uneasily.

"Oh," Anathema said, sweeping her skirt under her as she sat, "one of my older relatives told me I should come here for a vacation, and I've always tried to follow her advice - she tends to be right."

Michael sat neatly upright, hands clasped in her lap. "Nothing particularly interesting I'm afraid. I'm here through work. The airbase?" She indicated its general direction with a tilt of her head. "Some of my soldiers were - required - there. I'm afraid I can't go into details."

"Classified, is it?"

"Indeed. I'm not allowed to reveal much without permission from the Highest Authority." Michael smiled, light, sweet, and amused. "To be honest, at my level it's mostly paperwork and meetings...though I do have to keep in training."

Adam buried his face in Dog's fur, but not before Michael saw him trying not to laugh.

Adam's parents smiled back.

"Why Adam?" his father wanted to know. "Is this related to his, ah, antics at the airbase?"

"That's what brought him to my attention," Michael agreed, "but then I learned that we were distantly related and that made me...curious. He's a nice child, you've raised him well. He reminds me of my brother." She saw both Adam and Anathema flinch and winced herself. She hadn't meant to let that last part slip out.

In stark contrast, his parents relaxed when they caught that slip of her tongue, as if that made it better that she had been hanging around.

"Related," Adam's mother echoed.

Michael spread her hands. "One of those divided familes. The two, ah, sides, have been estranged for a very long time, but if you go back far enough, they were all brought forth by the same person. I am on one side, Adam - and his father - on the other." She nodded to the man. "I suggested 'aunt' as a simplification, but I fully understand if you'd rather not go there."

Anathema jumped into the breach and added, "For my part, Adam offered to cheer me up when I was having - when I'd lost something important. We just got talking and one thing led to another. He's good company."


	8. Unexpected Tasks

The interrogation that Adam's parent's gave them went on for some time, and when they finally gave permission for Adam to continue interacting with both Michael and Anathema, Michael could only feel relief that her slip hadn't caused permanent problems.

His mother said firmly, "And he's not to go pestering you at the base, you hear me, Adam?"

Adam only nodded, staring at the ground.

Michael looked at him, and tried not to bite her lip. "It wouldn't be safe for you to come to me," she said, her voice gentle but with an undercurrent of warning. She drew out her phone. "I assume you'll want my contact details."

Adam's father nodded, and she gave him the number miracled to get through to her wherever she was.

On the way back down the road, Adam scuffing along beside them, Michael said softly, "If you need me, call me. I'll come if I can. And if you need me urgently and can't get to a phone, pray."

Anathema turned to stare at her. "What do prayers have to do with anything?"

"I'm an angel," Michael pointed out patiently. "If you pray to me by name and believe it will get through - I'll hear it."

"Since when do angels have brothers?" Anathema demanded, once they were back in her garden.

Michael shrugged. "In my case? Since before time began. We were created, five of us, in the same moment, and have called each other brother, sister, or sibling ever since."

"Sibling?" Anathema echoed.

"Raphael prefers to remain genderless. Xie says it gets in the way of pure research."

"And the others?"

"I have a sister named Uriel and a brother named Gabriel. He was at the airbase. Grey suit."

Anathema counted the names on her fingers as they came out and came up short. "That's only four of you. What about number five?"

Michael felt her face going hard and set, and tried to school it back to neutrality. "He Fell. We don't talk anymore."

"She means my dad," Adam blurted, kicking at a pebble. His voice rose in a child's wail. "But he's _not_ my dad and I- I don't _want_ to be like him!"

Anathema stared from Michael to Adam and back. Her face went pale and she took an involuntary step back.

Michael stopped moving. "Adam."

He glared at her and turned his back. "Please," he said, his voice quieter, shakier, and more desperate, "I'm not...am I?"

"Adam." Michael reached out awkwardly and put a hand on his shoulder. She was meant for battle, not for comfort. "Listen to me. He was clever, and inventive, and charming...and stubborn enough to refuse to do what he was supposed to do. So are you. He made his own place, gathered his own people to him - and so have you. That's what I'm reminded of, not..." She let her voice trail off, winding around the unsayable.

Adam twisted in her loose grip, staring up at her for a long moment. Then he lunged towards her, and Michael flinched as his arms wrapped around her. She stamped down hard on ingrained battle reflexes and hesitantly returned the action.

Anathema swallowed and returned just as hesitantly. "You mean the Devil is your brother? But I thought you were an angel?"

"He was an angel, once," Michael replied. "But that was a long time ago."


	9. Aching Hearts

Weeks passed before Adam would say anything to Michael except minimal politeness in the sword lessons she gave the Them on Saturdays.

Even then, it was only to explain as they were tidying things away, "You'd better not come next week. Aziraphale and Crowley are visiting, and you promised to leave them alone."

"I did." Michael handed over her wooden sword. "If you decide you still want lessons that week, I suggest you ask Aziraphale. He used to be - adequate - with a sword."

Pepper's eyes lit up with her grin. "Bet he knows different techniques from you. If he'll teach me them..."

"I don't see why he wouldn't, he had multiple genders in his platoon." Michael shrugged. "It's his call of course. He's no longer under my command."

Adam nodded approvingly at that, and Michael took her leave.

* * *

Oddly enough, she found that she missed them when the week rolled around and she didn't go down to teach the children. She made the most of her now free time by rousting Raphael out of the Infirmary and dragging xer off for a little private sibling time. Raphael, of course, grumbled all the way, but in xer bantering mode rather than actually irritated.

"So," Raphael said over xer shoulder, spreading all six wings for Michael's attention. "What's the gossip going around, sis?"

Michael affected a bland face, and started with the top left wing, smoothing barbs back together and straightening the feathers that had gotten twisted somehow. "Gossip? There is no gossip, Raphael. We're angels."

"Oh come off your high horse, Michael. I'm a Healer, you know that means I have to be able to diagnose results from the visible signs." Raphael folded xer arms and began ticking points off by extending xer right primaries one by one. "First Gabriel comes back with his feathers ruffled up like an affronted chicken, then Armageddon gets called off - not that I'm not glad about that as a Healer, mind - and our Earth agent gets - removed from duty. I'm diagnosing Earth with a rebellion, Antichrist and angels both, am I right?"

"Partially right," Michael conceded, fishing a hank of surgical thread out of Raphael's coverts. Xie had a terrible habit of hanging things on xer wings to keep them accessible while leaving xer hands free, and then forgetting to retrieve whatever it was before xie folded xer wings away. "Hell's Earth agent was also involved. By the looks of it, both agents defected to serve Earth directly and co-operate."

"Ah, that makes sense. And the Antichrist?"

Michael hesitated, working out what she could safely say, and covered herself by checking the secondaries of the middle left wing minutely. "The Antichrist," she said at last, "loves his home and won't stand for anyone destroying it, not even Archangels."

"Can't really blame him for that. Though I'm sure Gabriel does." Raphael shivered with pleasure as Michael's hands dug into xer feathers. "What's he like, other than that?"

"Beneficiary of the curse, 'may all your children turn out just like you', I suspect." Michael made a start on the right wings, and almost at once found a quill pen pretending to be a moulted feather.

"Oh!" Raphael exclaimed when Michael tickled xer nose with the pen. "So that's where that went! I thought I'd tucked it behind my ear, and then couldn't find it." Xie fiddled with the pen, twirling it in xer fingers. "I wonder if he'd ever be willing to meet - me. Couldn't blame him if he painted all five of us with the same brush, considering what I heard about how Gabriel and his father treated him, but if he's like his father used to be..." Raphael's face took on an aching wistfulness as xie stared into memory.

Michael's heart ached in sympathy with her sibling. She wanted that reminder, that similarity too, but given how hurt Adam had been when it had slipped out, she didn't want to cause any more problems. She said only, "His name is Adam. Adam Young. I'd hope we could get to know our nephew, but it's really up to him now. I'm sure he'll get in touch if that's what he wants."


	10. Martial Arts

Michael was halfway down the stairs when her phone pulsed against her skin. She fished it out, careful to keep her face angelically calm and her annoyance locked behind her teeth. If Gabriel had yet another yard of paperwork that he wanted done before tomorrow's meeting, she was going to...

It wasn't Gabriel.

Michael allowed herself a quick blink of surprise. The call was apparently coming in from the Youngs. She hadn't expected them to ever call her - at least not the parents. Adam might have, before she blundered, though admittedly he was thawing towards her.

She took another breath, then answered it. "Hello?"

"Michael." Mrs Young sounded relieved to have reached her. "So sorry to disturb you, I know you're busy. It's just been one of those days. Problems all over the place for everyone, so I said I'd collect all of Adam's friends from school, and now Sarah's had a nasty fall and I need to take her up to A&E and I just wondered..."

Michael flicked a precautionary glance up and down the stairwell and found no eavesdroppers. "You're hoping I'll do it," she suggested.

"If it isn't going to be too much trouble?"

Michael, tactician that she was, recognised a power move when she saw one. Clearly eleven years of raising the Antichrist had given his mother a lot of experience in coercing the supernatural into line. Michael sighed, "Very well. It will get me out from under this paperwork for a little while. But I can't stay long."

"Oh, thank you. You're an angel." Mrs Young wrapped up the details of who, when, and where, and then hung up.

Michael stared at her phone for a long moment, thinking, _How the hell did you know I was?_ Then she shook herself out of it, and finished her journey to her office. She piled the assorted scrolls and pages onto her desk, allowed herself a scowl at it, and then snapped herself into white and grey camouflage, more suitable for the Earth soldier she was assumed to be than her preferred suit. She left her hair alone, still pinned severely up on her head out of her way, and took herself down to Tadfield.

* * *

Adam greeted her with a surprised, but cheerful, "Auntie Michael! What are you doing here?" which somehow had the effect of stopping the wary looks of the other adults.

"Something came up," Michael explained blandly, "and your mother asked me to step in. I'm collecting all of you, apparently."

Adam's eyebrows bounced up his forehead. "Really?"

"Yes, really. I don't have the details, you'll have to ask her when she gets back."

"Ok." Adam trotted off to round up the rest of the Them.

A small girl dodged behind Michael, who half turned to keep an eye on the child.

Part of her noticed the other, bigger, child charging towards her, but it wasn't her primary focus. Habits developed from millenia of shield-wall training also caused her to almost absently brace for an impact rather than evade a charge.

The boy bounced off her shield-arm and landed on his backside. He rather resembled a miniature version of Sandalphon, Michael thought, turning back to pay mild attention to him. Although with rather more hair.

He stared at her, mouth open, as if no-one had ever withstood him before. A lot of the children were staring at her, she realised uncomfortably, as if she had done something that betrayed her true nature. She swallowed back a sigh, took the necessary two steps and pulled the boy back to his feet.

She said, "No harm done," and willed it to be so, leaving only faint bruises where he had landed so hard on the ground. They would heal in a day or so. Instant healing would just make everything worse. "Be more careful next time. Play with people your own - age." He was no older than Adam, after all, though somewhat taller and bulkier. If Adam could carry the entire weight of ending or saving the world, this boy could surely take the responsibility for his own actions.

When she came back to her previous spot, Pepper had captured the little girl's hand in hers.

"My name's Joan," the small, round, girl said, her chin as stubborn as Pepper's, "after Joan of Arc. What's your name?"

A memory of a 15th century farmyard and another small, stubborn,  _ brave _ , little girl flashed through Michael's mind. A second memory panged sharp on the first's heels. The moment  _ that _ girl had got into Heaven she had stormed up to Michael, jabbed a finger at her, and demanded, "Did you know?" Michael hadn't had an answer for her. Now, Michael took a breath she didn't need and said, "My name is Michael."

"Oh! Like the Archangel!"

"Yes," the Archangel Michael agreed softly. "The same as the Archangel."


	11. Fighting a Friend

Pepper was still all but staring at Michael when she finally gathered up the whole of the Them and led them away down the road towards their homes. "You withstood Greasy Johnson," she breathed at last, still holding onto her little sister. 

Michael said, "That's the boy's name?"

"It's what we call him." More words spilled out of Pepper, all laced with eagerness. "He's the school bully, he'll go after anyone, send them flying. He even knocks adults down. We've," she waved her free hand at the Them, "learned to dodge when we fight him, but you- you just  _ stood _ there and he  _ bounced _ ! It was amazing! How'd you do it?"

"There is a battle training we do in large groups," Michael said, after a moment to think. Her reaction had been so ingrained, so close to instinct, that she needed that moment to parse the cause. "We form one or more shield walls, and some charge us, so that we learn to stand firm against it. There are not," she added, anticipating Pepper's request, "enough of you to do it here." She chose not to mention that angels were generally stronger than humans, and certainly more able to heal themselves and each other from the inevitable hurts one picked up in such trainings. She had seen enough of Pepper to know that it would land her nothing but a lecture on stereotyping races. Instead, she let them chatter among themselves, listening to the minutia of their daily lives with mild interest and curiousity.

The group shrank as they reached each house in turn, losing first Adam, then Pepper and Joan, then Wensleydale. Brian was the last, farthest from the school and closest to the quarry.

He stopped just shy of his garden gate. "Can I ask you something?"

"If you wish." Michael stopped too, and turned to face him, hands clasped automatically behind her back as she stood easy.

Brian took a long breath. "How do you cope with having had to fight your best friend? He turned on us and it was..." There was an echo, like a tornado of fear and grief and guilt, swirling in Brian's voice, but his eyes, when he looked up at her, held the steel of the child Michael remembered staring down Pollution.  _ I believe in a clean world... _

Michael clamped her mouth shut on her first response, the memory of Lucifer beginning to Fall, beginning to slide out of her reach forever, taking half her heart with him, skewered on the horns of his shattered crown, seared into her mind. She wrenched her thoughts away, focusing instead on Ligur. On his knife in her back the first time they had met as they now were. On the circle she'd bound him into the second time, forcing a truce while they were both on Earth at once instead of constant, mutual, discorporation. She swallowed, licked dry lips, and answered his question with another. "If you had to do it again, what would you do differently?"

"I-" Brian's hand fidgeted with the stained cuff of his shirt. He looked down at his feet, his face crumpling. "I don't think I could do anything different. If I hadn't- If we hadn't- We- we wouldn't even _be_ here now!"

Michael nodded, trying to blink away the sight and sound of Lucifer screaming. Of her _brother_ screaming. "Duty," she said, her voice raspier than it should have been, as if she had been the one screaming through a billion light year drop. She schooled it back to her usual tones. "Sometimes you do what you must, because there is nothing else you can do. I'm told the worst of it fades with time, for humans. Try to think of other things."

"For humans?" Brian echoed. "Do angels not forget then? That's awful."

Michael made herself smile. "We have perfect recall," she said, with an outwardly casual shrug. "It is how we were made. Go on in. Your parents are waiting." She did not, would not, ever question God's choice to make angels that way. She didn't dare, and she didn't sleep, for fear of the memories that she might relive in dreams. Seeing angels Fall for wanting to know why a thing happened did not exactly encourage one to ask questions yourself, lest the same happen to you.

Brian frowned, but her smile seemed to reassure him, because he shrugged too, and trotted off up the path to his front door. Michael held herself and her face very still until he was gone, then turned away herself.

How did you cope? There was only one answer that she knew for sure, and it wasn't one that would bring the reassurance she thought he was seeking. She didn't know for certain how demons did it, but on Earth, as it was in Heaven, the answer was very simple: _You don't._


	12. Facing Your End

Adam stopped Michael as she came back past his house, heading for the edge of Tadfield, out from under Adam's shield that now prevented angels like her from simply appearing. He said, "I have a question."

"You have a question," Michael repeated, forcing her voice to steadiness. Did these children have anything other than questions? She turned from habit and took up an at-ease pose, hands clasped tight behind her back, where no one could see them tremble.

"Yeah." His eyes were very old and sad in his young face. "C'n I ask you? I'll open a temp'ry window for you to go-" he pointed up.

Lucifer's eyes, Michael's memory told her, had looked like that for a split second when she drew her sword on his rebellion. In him, it had been wiped away by rage a moment later, though, and Adam's weren't changing. She took a breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and sought for strength. It was there, barely. Brian's question had shattered her usual shell of calm, but she could fake it, surely, until she could retreat back to the safety of her office. She was an angel. She had to be strong. "If you wish," she said, opening her eyes and stepping through the gate into Adam's garden.

Adam swallowed, then lifted his chin to meet her gaze with those old, sad, eyes. "How do you cope with someone wanting to kill you - trying to kill you, even. They just sort of - dropped it - like it was nothing. I can't. How do I fix becoming so terrifying that they'd just, like, kill me and think nothing of it? How do I make things right again?"

Michael looked at him, fighting to hold the shards of her strength together. "Why are you asking me?" Her face was doing - something. She forced it to calmness. This wasn't the kind of question encouraged by Heaven. Not that any kind of serious questioning was encouraged by Heaven, but this kind woke too many shattering memories and left her floundering out of her depth.

Adam shrugged. "You're the only person I know who both knows about it, and might have answers. You fought my not-dad, right? Your brother? How do you cope with that?"

Michael had enough grace to wince at that. "I don't think I have answers that you'll like," she temporised.

"Better than no answer at all."

Michael didn't flex her fingers to pull out her sword from its otherspace. She didn't pace the garden, measuring its length and breadth with her stride. She drew instead on millennia of training to remain statue-still no matter her true desires. She stared into the distance and locked her leg muscles, but nothing came to her but the truth. "I - don't let myself think about it." She swallowed, and looked back at the Antichrist. For a long moment, her eyes were open windows into an ancient grief that outstripped anything remotely human. "Adam," she said, her voice a flat monotone pared of all emotion, "I can't even say his name. And yet - I can't hate him, and I won't, he won't, reconcile. So. Here we are." She turned away, breaking their gaze before she overwhelmed him. "We don't, as a rule," she went on, her words little louder than a whisper, "talk about it in Heaven. There are too many dangers in talking about something so..." She had to stop, to try and find the words for it. "Everyone lost someone close to them that day. Half our number torn away. Fighting for your own and Heaven's survival against those as close as family. We don't break easily, but we broke then, hearts and minds both. I broke. In some ways I'm still broken. I try not to be. I - detach. Many of us do, that's how we cope. If you're not attached to anyone, if you don't feel anything, you can't break further, either yourself or others." She risked a glance. He was staring at her, tears rolling down his cheeks.

He whispered, "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

She found a ragged breath of calm from somewhere, enough to gentle her voice. "There was no reason you should know."

Adam scrubbed his face on his sleeve.

Michael miracled up a handkerchief and handed it to him. "May I go now?"

"Oh." He dried his face and made a quick, sideways, gesture, opening up the promised window. "Will you be back?"

"Yes," Michael said before she thought. It caught up with her a moment later, and she attempted, and failed, to smile. "Can't have Pepper storming Heaven, can we?" She took off before he could answer that feeble joke, launching herself upward with a flick of hidden wings and reappeared in her office. She sagged into her chair, snapped herself back into her usual outfit, locked the door and buried her face in her hands as the last remnants of her usual facade collapsed. _Oh, my brother, I miss you..._


	13. Lines Drawn

"It occurs to me," Michael says, several visits later, "that there is a way to protect yourself from others or to protect others from yourself. It is no longer common, nor - welcomed - by certain parties, but it exists."

All four young faces turn to stare at her, and she takes a breath that she doesn't need. She's not quite sure when these visits started to become a highlight of her week, despite everything, but she does, for some unknown reason, look forward to them.

Adam glances at his three companions, swallows, and says politely, "Please tell us."

Michael nods and clasps her hands behind her back, dropping almost unconsciously into her "reporting" posture. "If you want to protect yourself, or contain a - person - who is already present, you can do so with a simple circle, sealed with a drop of blood. The blood binds the intent of the binder into the circle. To contact a person, or summon them to you requires a much more complex circle and writing your requirements, bindings, and so forth very precisely in a certain ancient language." Michael's eyes flick to Pepper. "Circles for contact went out of fashion when phones came into use and were vastly more effective, efficient, and less deadly. Summoning circles are immensely difficult and dangerous for any human, and only somewhat less for angels. Demons, of course, detest them."

"So are you saying," Wensleydale puts in, eyes narrowed in thought, "that for protection all you need to do is draw an ordinary circle?"

"Not entirely," Michael qualifies. "You also have to believe it will work, which I doubt will be a problem, given that you've already proved you can hold to what you believe." They had, after all, done exactly that to defeat the Horsepeople of the Apocalypse. "And also hold the limits you intend in your mind while you complete it. I suppose you wish a demonstration?"

Brian and Adam both nod eagerly, then glance at each other with almost apologetic smiles. Michael glances around the quarry, taking in the options, then sweeps a patch of ground clear of leaves so that she has a smooth drawing surface.

"Anything that breaks the circle breaks the protection," she explains tersely. She pulls her flaming dagger out of its otherspace to draw with, turning the flames off with an absent flick of her wrist, and crouches to draw a neat circle in the dirt around her own feet. Straightening she pricks her finger with the tip of the dagger, lets a single drop of blood fall on the circle, and heals the tiny wound with a thought. She's had far worse sparring, no one in Heaven will think twice about the healing miracle, even if they notice it. A faint shimmer of blue light springs up around her as she focuses on the circle's wall being solid, but harming no one.

Pepper whistles at the sight.

"Now, try to touch me," Michael challenges.

Pepper is already moving, her practice sword jabbing out in one of the basic thrusts Michael has taught her. (Michael finds herself unexpectedly pleased and proud at how well the girl has learned it) The wooden sword skids off the protective circle and Pepper's eyebrows go up in interest.

The boys draw closer too, Wensleydale methodically poking his way around the edge of the circle, Brian with longer and wilder swings.

Adam - Adam with an aching wariness in his eyes as he reaches out a hand and then snatches it back before he actually makes contact. "It won't hurt me, will, it? With you being an angel and me being...me?"

"Not with me," Michael tells him. "I can't speak for anyone else."

Adam gives her a long look, then reaches out again and carefully flattens his hand against the wall of her circle. Nothing happens, and relief flickers across his face as he relaxes enough to grin at her. It's so similar to some of her earliest memories of Lucifer that Michael's heart aches with it, but she's well in control this time and gives Adam a small smile back.

Adam takes that as encouragement. He plants his other hand beside the first, and _pushes_ , with hands and mind both. Michael quickly, and silently reinforces her focus. Adam is stronger than she is, there's no doubt about it. He can shape reality better and stronger than she ever will with her own miracles and willpower. What Michael has that he doesn't is six thousand or so years of experience training and fighting other people who can _also_ shape reality to some extent.

The circle holds and she sees the belief surge in all of them that this can work. That this _will_ work, and that's exactly what they need. She waits until they've all probed to their satisfaction, then scuffs out parts of the circle with her foot, breaking it and reabsorbing the power.

"Now," she says, simply. "This is like swordwork, which means it's your turn to practice."


	14. Demon's Scorn

Michael was on the training grounds when the prayer found her. Her arm and sword continued to fend off three guardian angels on autopilot even as she listened, and recognised the voice. She disarmed them and stepped back. "You'll have to excuse me," she said, with precisely the allowable note of polite apology in her voice, "I'm being summoned." She inclined her head and moved off quickly, but not so fast that she was out of earshot when one of the guardian angels hissed to another.

"See! Even archangels get summoned sometimes."

Michael's mouth twitched in the smallest of smiles. This wasn't a circle summoning her, only a nearly incoherent, desperate, child. A pleading Antichrist. She wasn't compelled to answer, as she would have been with a circle.

But she still wondered, as much as she dared to wonder at all - if she had gone to Lucifer the last time he called her, would he still have Fallen? Would _she_ have Fallen? She had ignored the father, she wasn't about to ignore the son, particularly not when she'd told him to pray if he needed her badly. She sheathed her sword in otherspace, where she could draw it in less than a breath, flexed her knees, and let the prayer take her where it would.

She landed lightly in the quarry, and swept the area around her with her gaze. Dog sat stubbornly by the milk crate the children used as a seat, and there, perhaps a stride away, Adam sat hunched on bare ground, alone and encased in a protective circle. It shone faintly red, which meant either he'd drawn it himself, or a demon had. Hell's circles were always reddish, just as Heaven's were tinted blue, and human ones shone plain silver. She did a second sweep for danger, but found nothing. Even the hints of Hell were limited to Dog and to Adam himself.

She walked over and crouched on her heels close enough to lay her hand on the wall of the circle. It hummed against her skin, pushing her away. "Adam?"

He lifted his head from his knees, his usually blue eyes smudged with red shadows, his face tear-stained. "You came. I didn't think..."

"Where are your friends?" Michael interrupted, before he could remind her too much of her brother.

The red shadows in Adam's eyes flickered. "I sent them away. Told -  _ asked _ \- them to go home. Don't want to hurt them again." He shuddered. "You should go too. Can't - contain it - much longer."

Michael regarded him with an impassive face. "What do you need to contain it?"

"Don't know. Crowley might, but..."

"Call him?"

"No phone."

Michael pulled hers from inside her coat. "Here."

Adam reached out a shaking hand, then realised that would break the circle and snatched it back. "I-" His voice cracked on a sob. "I can't."

"I could call for you," Michael said, thinking out loud. "With your permission, of course."

"You promised to leave them alone."

"I did," Michael agreed. "But you didn't. I'd be acting on your behalf." The thin thread of prayer still coiled in the back of her mind strengthened ever so slightly, an aching keen of uncertainty and fear. Finally, Adam nodded.

Michael nodded back, straightened, miracled the Serpent's number onto her phone next to Ligur's, and dialled.

"This is Anthony J. Crowley," the voice on the other end said cheerfully. "You know what to do. Do it with style."

Michael turned away enough that Adam wouldn't see her roll her eyes and said tersely. "Adam needs you."

Before she could disconnect, there was a sudden click and a much more suspicious voice demanded, "Who is this?"

"Someone who was close enough to lend her phone," Michael told him dryly.

"Do I know you?"

Michael thought of the bath, and holy water, and the Serpent demanding a towel from her. "We've met."

There was a long moment of hissing static on the line. Then, "How do I know it's not a trap?"

"If I wanted to trap you, Serpent, I'd summon you with a circle, not a phone. Ten minutes." Michael placed her phone on the ground, face up, and stepped clear, ignoring the splutter of consonants that emerged.

Nine endless minutes later, a stream of shimmering black fountained out of the phone and coalesced into a black-clad, red-haired, male-shaped figure. He glared around until his gaze landed on Michael, and then glared harder. "You!"

Adam made a wordless croak, then managed, "Crowley?"

Crowley turned, took one look, dropped to his knees and held out his arms wide, like some kind of surrender. The circle collapsed. Adam made a breathless sob and flung himself at the demon, who wrapped his arms tight around the boy, pinning the smaller body to his own.

Micheal eased back a step.

The demon glared at her over the boy's shoulder. "You're the angel. Why didn't you just comfort him?"

Michael knew something about comfort. Comfort was a sister's hands combing through her coverts. It was Raphael's fingers kneading the knots out of a stubborn muscle. It was the gleam of eyes shifting colour in a shadow, and the gleam of teeth at a bad joke. How that translated to this situation... "I'm a warrior," she snapped, lifting her chin in defiance to hide her ignorance and uncertainty. "I'm made for fighting, not for comforting."

"So's Aziraphale, and _he_ manages just fine!"

"He's a Principality, a protector," Michael replied simply, burying her feelings behind a bland face and a level voice. "He's made to be a shield. I am nothing but a sword."


	15. Point and Blade

When Adam and Crowley finally stood again, they staggered on feet gone numb from kneeling too long. Michael grabbed them both instinctively, as she would have grabbed someone she was training who hurt their leg, and steadied them.

Crowley froze, staring first at her hand gripping his arm, then at her face. She kept it bland, and didn't hold him any longer than it took him to get his balance back. He was hard to read through those sunglasses anyway.

The pair settled on the milkcrate to talk instead, and Dog jumped into Adam's arms, licking his tears away. Michael retrieved her phone and stepped back enough to give them the illusion of privacy.

It didn't last long as Adam's voice rose in despair once more.

"I got angry, and the voices came back, and then I got scared and they got louder and I can't make it stop!"

Crowley mumbled something thick with consonants, then said more clearly, "Have you tried yelling?"

"Last time I yelled at people, I _took away their mouths_ ," Adam half-wailed. "How do you stop yourself from being angry?"

Michael might not fully understand human-style comfort, but here she was on more familiar ground. "You can't stop feeling something," she said mildly, pulling both gazes back to her as she closed the distance. "But you can channel it safely. Here." She miracled one of the usual practice swords into her hand and held it out to Adam. "Hit the tyre swing."

Adam gave her a dubious, still scared, look but the habit of her sword-training him was strong enough that he took it and tried. He only caught the edge of it.

Michael folded her hands behind her, taking her usual trainer's pose to reinforce that habit. "Again," she said. "Hard enough to make it move this time."

Adam took a long breath and lashed out with the sword, hammering the swing harder and more wildly with each stroke, until he hit so hard that the wooden blade broke. He stopped with the remains of the hilt in his hands, and looked up at her, breathing hard.

Michael miracled it back together, and raised an eyebrow. "Still angry?"

"I-" A look of wonder came over Adam's face. "No," he said in a small, surprised voice. "I'm not. And the voices are quieter too."

"There you go then," Michael said, doing her best to ignore the Serpent's stare as she sent the practice sword back to where it had come from. She focused on the relief dawning on Adam's face instead.

Crowley asked, "You ok to go home, kid?"

Adam swallowed, thought about it, then nodded. "Thank you. Both of you." He started slowly down the path, shoulders slumping with tiredness, then turned back. "An' don't you two go fighting each other, neither. Especially not over me."

The Serpent eyed her. "I won't if you won't," he muttered.

Michael nodded her acceptance.

Adam gave them a tiny, watery, smile, then plodded off home with Dog bouncing in circles around him.

Once he was gone, the Serpent shoved his fingertips into too small pockets, his shoulders taut with wariness as he turned to face her.

Michael offered him the phone. "I won't trap you here," she reiterated.

He looked at the phone, then at her, and the corner of his mouth ticked upwards. "Gabriel would never have done that. Any of that." His flapping elbows somehow managed to encompass the whole of the situation with Adam.

Michael said blandly, "I'm not Gabriel."

"Obviously."

She eyed him, wondering whether he was one of those demons who liked bad jokes (the way Ligur did) or hated them (the way Hastur did). "Swords," she said, keeping her tone mild, "are generally quick to get the point." She took a breath she didn't need, and added, with her face almost straight, with only a little humour dancing in her eyes, "Spears take rather longer."

The Serpent gaped at her. Flat out gaped.

Then he outright _cackled_ , and she had her answer.


	16. Requests Made

Crowley slouched into Adam's junk-throne, one leg hooked over the arm. He jabbed a finger at Michael. "You beat up Aziraphale. You brought holy water to try and destroy me. Why should we trust you around Adam?"

Michael considered remaining standing, but it reminded her entirely too much of reporting to Gabriel as a supplicant. The only other seat was the milkcrate, which would still leave her in an inferior position to the throne. She informed it firmly but silently that it was not going to leave stains on her suit and sat. It could have been worse. "You have no reason to trust me," she said with the slightest of shrugs. "But Adam wanted me here, so I came. I'd leave you to it, but unless you brought a phone with you...?" She gave him a questioning look.

He scowled and shook his head.

"Then you'll need mine to get back, and I believe I said I wasn't going to trap you here."

"Like I'd trust an angel."

Michael gave another slight shrug. "Adam stopped the War, with your assistance. I had my chance for revenge with the holy water and it didn't take. Why would I waste resources on trying again?"

The Serpent snorted. "So you can restart the war? Turn it on us again, like Gabriel wants?" he snarled, throwing his hands in the air. "Have you even seen what human wars look like?"

Michael sighed. "Most of them, yes."

He froze. Lowered his hands slowly. Stared at her. "I was being rhetorical."

"I wasn't."

He spluttered wordlessly, and she took pity enough to give him a brief explanation.

"Every time I wanted to spar with War, I had to go where she was."

"Oh," he said. Then, after a moment, "Why would you spar with War?"

"She's one of the few people who is both willing to spar me, and capable of pushing me to my limits."

Aziraphale had always been one of the few others who could keep up with her, which was one reason she had put him on the list to guard Eden, but he had been steadfastly unwilling to spar since the Fall, so she'd had to find alternatives. In hindsight it should have been obvious that he wouldn't want to fight for real either. She'd assumed that he would fail at stopping the war, but she'd been wrong there too.

"Oh," Crowley said again. "Ngk."

Michael sat there and watched that revelation sink in, his mobile face shifting around his sunglasses into a slowly dawning horror at all she must have seen. The sort of horror that could only come from also knowing what it was like.

He said warily, "Were you at Mons?"

"Briefly."

He swore at her in a language dead at least three thousand years. "Do you know how much trouble Gabriel gave Aziraphale over that?"

Michael allowed the corner of her mouth to tick upwards in admiration of the extent of his vocabulary. "I'm aware of some of it. I may have missed some." _If you want to find Archangels_ , the old parody started up in her head, along with the even older guilt, _I know where they are_...

He glowered. "I'll have that phone now."

She got up and brought it to him, then stepped clear, clasping her hands behind her back. "Tell Aziraphale, if he ever changes his mind about sparring, I would be glad to partner him. Adam will know how to contact me."

"Hah! So you can corner him again and hurt him?"

Michael sighed. "I didn't touch him. I told him it was time to choose a side. He did, rather spectacularly. He's no longer under my command, and I can give him no more orders. But I can ask." She missed having him as a sparring partner, but she wasn't going to force the issue. Not now.

Crowley rolled his head instead of his eyes, dialed a number, and vanished into the phone.

Michael retrieved it, gave him a few minutes to get wherever he was going, then ended the call and walked away into the sunset as the dying day bled out all over the sky. The prayer had gone too. The song hadn't. ... _they're sitting in Heaven planning another war_...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song being parodied is "Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire". (cw for the song: death, war, alcohol)


	17. You Shall Not Pass

The next time a prayer summons rolled in, it was less incoherent and more furious, ringing in Michael's mind as clear as Lucifer's voice used to before he Fell. It hurt, that memory, but she pushed that away as the entire situation unfurled from Adam's knowing mind to hers.

***

_There was supposed to be a war. It was written._

_All the information had said there was going to be a war, therefore there_ had _to be one. There was no way forward without it, like a blockage on the track._

_Everyone knew there was to be a war. It was the only thing that made sense. If there wasn't a war, then how could they win it?_

_He couldn't just "move past it". There was no "way past", only the blockage where the war was supposed to be and yet wasn't._

_If he could just remove the blockage, then everything could move forward again, as it was said and as it was written._

_If he could remove the blockage, then everything would be fine again...._

***

Michael was grateful that this time she was alone in her office, leaving her free to snarl in recognition. That was Gabriel to the core. 

The rest of it came in snatched images:

Gabriel raising his hands to smite Adam down.

Aziraphale and Crowley stepping in to protect Adam. Succeeding in that, only to be struck down themselves.

The Them stepping in, in their turn, to protect the angel and demon.

Adam staring Gabriel in the face, holding his attention while the others worked. 

Pepper and Wensleydale looking down, each dragging a toe in the dust as if shy, embarrassed and apologetic, until they had each drawn half of a protective circle.

Brian picking at a scab on his arm, where he had grazed it falling out of the apple tree, until it bled and he could flick a drop down off his fingers to activate the circle.

White flames. White light and fury...

***

Michael didn't wait any longer. With a snap of her fingers, she was fully armed and armoured. The suit remained an illusion over it as she dropped to Earth and landed silently, without any of the due lightning or ceremony, more than a sword length behind her fellow Archangel and out of obvious sight.

Adam's eyes glowed red, but he remained with his feet planted on the ground, fists clenched at his sides as he met Gabriel's purple gaze. "You promised to leave us alone," he said. "You have broken your word. You shall not pass."

The circle shimmered silver-white between Michael and Earth's protectors, and angelic lightning crawled across it, seeking a way through.

She swallowed silently, composed face and voice to calmness against her own fear and fury, then stepped forward into everyone's view and cleared her throat. "Hello, Gabriel."


	18. Sword of Glass

Standing behind him, Michael might have been the only person to see the tremor that ran down Gabriel's back. If he'd had his wings out, they would definitely have ruffled up in an affronted manner. As it was, he turned and pasted on one of his false smiles.

"Michael. How good of you to join us."

"I wondered what you were doing," she responded blandly.

Over Gabriel's shoulder, she saw Adam flinch and Pepper glare. She ignored them, for now, in order to concentrate on parrying the words that Gabriel would use as weapons.

He said, as she expected, "You're nothing but a sword. You wouldn't understand."

Michael didn't so much as blink in rebuttal. He had said it quite often enough for her to be familiar with the phrase, and always before, she had been too busy protecting her soldiers from his demands to respond to it.

Besides, it was true. She was a blade to be wielded. Even her true angelic form was a crystal sword forged from lightning and ringed with fire. The thing that Gabriel had never learned, despite assuming he was good at wielding a blade, was that blades weren't just to attack. Sometimes they were there to parry, to block another's attack. Not perhaps the way that a shield could, but enough to survive long enough to respond. And some swords could be very picky about who they allowed to wield them in the first place.

_Whosoever pulls this sword from this stone...._ didn't mean that anyone at all could do it. On the contrary, it would resist and refuse everyone who tried and didn't meet the required standard.

Which rather meant she had to set her own standards for who would wield her, and Gabriel.... was not measuring up. It was time for  _her_ to choose a side instead of defaulting to Gabriel's side.

She took a slow deep breath, and let herself come to her full height for once, back straightening, head lifting, instead of holding herself compact to match Gabriel's height.

She rarely used her command voice these days - it gave too many of her soldiers flashbacks to the War - but if anything, now seemed to be the right time for it. It wasn't that she couldn't order them around without it, it was just that her command voice bypassed the hearer's ears and they generally found themselves obeying before they had time to think. Which, in turn, could cause more problems than it solved, if she wasn't careful. "Be not afraid" was especially tricky when there were actual dangers about, not just angels, and the person should, rightly, be afraid of said dangers - and wasn't, because of her.

"Gabriel," she snapped, and had the satisfaction of seeing him come to attention instinctively just from her tone. "Messenger. Carry this message," she thrust a sealed parchment into his hands, "to Raphael, then wait in my office for further instructions." His face went blank and unthinking, his wings twitched, and then he was gone.

In the corner of her eye, she saw both angel and demon Earth Agents spasm as the edges of her command voice reached them. Drained of energy almost to death, scorched, bleeding badly, they both ignored their own wounds to reach desperately for each other. There was no ignoring the blaze of love that flared from them as bright as the sun, bright enough to be seen even through Adam's deep love of Tadfield. 

Michael blinked the afterimages from her corporation's eyes and tamped her command voice back and down and away, where it couldn't hurt the pair further, as she walked over to stand just outside the protective circle. A remnant of the lightning crawled over it, and Michael manifested her shield and called the lightning silently to her. It leapt eagerly to obey and she absorbed it into the shield almost absently. "What is the situation?" It looked like a plain, if brutal, smiting, all power and no skill, but she could be wrong.  


Three children and an antichrist gaped at her. The circle remained up, blocking her from acting directly. She didn't try to break it. She needed them to trust her, if they ever could.

Finally, Pepper breathed, "Wow, your armour...."

Wensleydale added, "You have something on your face."

Michael glanced down. The illusion had fallen away at some point, revealing her white-gold, bright-polished armour with the winged and flaming sword etched on her breastplate. Her scars must be showing too, heavenly form visible through the earthly one like wine through a glass. "Not important," she told them, curbing her voice to a light, dry, tone. "See to those you protected." She nodded to the angel and demon.

"They're hurt!" Brian snapped at her.

"Obviously. How badly?"

"I don't knooow! I'm not a doctor!"

Adam swallowed. The red glow of his eyes flickered and dimmed. "Auntie Michael," he said, and his voice shook but his hands were steady. "I can- I can change things.  _Tell me what to do_ ."

Michael took another breath and let her body compact itself again. "First, feed them both some energy so they can begin to heal themselves..." She met Adam's gaze and let the memory of how that was done run through her mind.

He looked almost through her, then lifted his head and made a pouring gesture, as if he held a bowl. She could almost see the moment when the energy flooded into the pair, replacing that which they had used up shielding Adam. They would survive now. She wasn't sure how well - that would take an expert healer to determine - but it was a start.


	19. There to Heal

The wind whipped up around them for a moment, bringing with it a brief scent of Heaven, and Michael braced herself as she turned, in case the wrong angel had got her note. She was just in time to see the wind carry Raphael the last few inches to the ground and then die away.

Raphael appeared in a flowing, pale green, robe and sandals. Xer long hair, the bright, life-giving red-gold of the first spring sap, hung loose down xer back. If it wasn't for the inkstained fingers and the pen tucked haphazardly behind one ear, xie could have stepped out of a Renaissance painting. Xie took in the situation at a glance, and a breath later, the hair was up in a series of coiled braids, the inkstains had vanished, and the clothes had morphed into an entirely practical knee length tunic, hose, and boots (though still the same colour). 

Xie picked xer way down to stand by Michael. "Got your message, sis. Where's the patient?"

Michael pointed to the angel and demon crumpled inside the protective circle. "Earth's agents," she said mildly, and held her breath. She wasn't sure that Raphael would know diplomacy if it bit xer, but if it did, Raphael would almost certainly grab it by the scruff of the neck and prise its mouth open in order to better study the cause of the wound. 

Raphael eyed the pair, cocking xer head first one way, then the other, before considering the protective circle. Xie lifted xer head to grin at the children. "Hello, I'm a doctor. May I come in?"

Aziraphale whimpered softly and mantled a protective wing over Crowley. 

Crowley hissed, lips weakly curling back from his fangs, his own wing crumpled beneath him. 

Almost in unison, they whispered, "You can't have him."

Brian shot a worried glance at the pair, then at Adam who was now white-lipped and blue-eyed, and lifted his head with a steely determination. "Are you going to hurt them?"

"I won't harm them," Raphael said. "I can't guarantee the healing won't hurt in the moment."

Adam and Brian both looked at Michael for confirmation.

Michael nodded. Any angel could heal simple things. She could also do field healing, patching up someone long enough to get them to an expert. But Raphael  _was_ that expert. It was xer main purpose. That being said, it was a very bad idea to interfere with someone Raphael had taken on as a patient. Which, in turn, should offer more protection to Earth's new agents.

The Them looked at each other, then back at Raphael, who turned empty hands palm up.

Brian sighed, and the wall came down.

Raphael nodded in absent thanks, already moving briskly to kneel between the angel and the demon, glowing hands extended. Some sort of scanning miracle, Michael thought, to pick up exactly where all the injuries were.

There was no mistaking the wariness in the pairs' faces, but equally, they weren't up to fleeing. She moved herself, stepping over to the children and resting a supportive hand on Adam's back before he keeled over. "Very well done," she told them. "Very well done indeed."

Sheer relief filled Adam's eyes and he leaned against her, letting her take his weight.

"Oh, I remember you two," Raphael was saying cheerfully to xer patients. "You-" xie nodded at Aziraphale, xer hands too busy cleaning wounds to point, "mangled your leg up holding a doorway, right?"

"Er, yes?"

"And you," Raphael added to Crowley, "were the one who tried installing a two-way conversion switch on a red giant out of curiosity and managed to singe your eyebrows off in the process."

"Ngk," Crowley spluttered, his face going as red as his hair.

Raphael hovered a glowing hand over each of them, all professional healer, as their cuts closed up and bruises faded. Xie craned xer neck to examine Aziraphale's wing. "Up a bit, please."

Aziraphale blinked at the courtesy and complied.

Raphael nodded. "They're going to be somewhat fragile until you moult those scorched feathers," xie said, lightly, "but at least yours are intact. Sit there, and drink this while I put your beloved back together." 

Both Aziraphale and Crowley spluttered at that.

Xie miracled up a steaming bowl of something or other, and handed it to Aziraphale with no more than a slyly conspiratorial grin.

Aziraphale took it and sniffed suspiciously. Then his eyes went wide, and he made a small sound of surprised delight as he sipped.

"Now," xie said, turning to Crowley, "this will hurt a bit."

"Yeah, I know, the grace thing."

"What? No, I have a filter for that." Raphael blinked. "No, you've got both broken bones and dislocations in the same wing, and I'm going to have to set those by hand."

"Oh. Ngk. Argh..."

"Relax," Raphael added, lifting him near bodily to turn him over, "you aren't the first demon I've healed."

"I'm not?"

"Nope. Dagon has a terrible habit of getting carried away with the lovebites, and..."

Xie manifested xer lowest set of wings, chatting almost idly, and shifted position beside him, putting xerself at precisely the right level and angle to slide xer whole wing under Crowley's damaged one to support it.

Michael didn't watch, too busy dealing with Adam, who was trembling under her hand, but she still heard the crunch of bone sliding back into its socket and Crowley's choked off whine of pain. She said quietly, "You should sit down."

Adam sagged down onto the milk crate, and when Dog climbed into his arms, he buried his face in the hound's fur. "I think I gave them too much of my energy," he mumbled. "But they were protecting  _me_ ."


	20. Quiet Appeal

"There, all done." Raphael dusted xer hands off. "The splint is modelled after a feather sheath, so it'll crumble off when its job is done. Don't poke at it until then."

Crowley sat up slowly and twisted his head to look over his shoulder at the splinted wing, before turning back to Raphael with a certain wariness in his face. Raphael grinned cheerfully and handed him a bowl that matched Aziraphale's. "Eat your medicine," xie said, and rose to xer feet, tucking xer wings away, and adding something very quietly to Crowley that Michael didn't catch.

Crowley froze, spoon halfway to his mouth, then nodded.

Raphael produced a book bound in pale gold leather from xer personal pocket dimension and handed it to Crowley with an almost conspiratorial grin. Crowley immediately stuffed it into an interdimensional back pocket of his own, and they nodded almost politely to each other.

Michael raised an eyebrow as xie came over to the milkcrate where Adam sat. "What was in that book?"

Raphael shrugged. "Prayer transcripts. Some people have mistaken Crowley for me over the centuries, so I got the prayers they sent. Figured he ought to know what's been said about him, at least."

Raphael's red hair was several shades lighter than Crowley's and xie moved and dressed very differently, but their corporations were similar in height and build and androgyny. Michael found she wasn't vastly surprised that one was taken for the other at some point.

Adam lifted his head and met xer eyes. "What's your name? So I don't make the same mistake."

"I'm Raphael. And you are?"

"Adam Young."

"Nice to meet you, Adam Young. Now, if I may, I'd like to make sure none of the blast hit you."

Adam swallowed, and then nodded. Michael stepped back a pace so that her closeness wouldn't interfere with Raphael's scan, and took a moment to restore the illusion of her suit and hide her scars behind her earth form.

Raphael simply nodded back at Adam and laid a glowing hand on his curls, like a benediction to a long lost nephew. "Celestial energy drain on top of corporeal shock, no other injuries," xie pronounced, and miracled up a slab of chocolate. "Here, eat this, it'll help."

Adam took it with wide eyes and bit off a corner. He swallowed it, and his shoulders relaxed as he gave Raphael a real smile.

Raphael grinned back. "Perhaps some day we can meet on a better occasion. Michael's been telling me about you," xie said, and in a display of tact that Michael could hardly believe, said nothing about Adam's not-my-dad, only turning to check on the rest of the Them.

All three children ended up with their own bars of chocolate for shock, and the scabs on Brian's arm dried up and cracked off the healed skin with a gentle stroke of Raphael's thumb. Pepper even knew enough to ask for - and get - Raphael's pronouns.

Adam popped the last of his chocolate in his mouth, fending off Dog's pleading eyes, "Auntie Michael, what does Raphael know about me?"

Michael took a slow breath that she didn't need and schooled her face to calmness. Across the quarry she could sense Aziraphale and his Serpent watching her - or maybe it was Adam they were watching over. "Not as much as xie makes it sound. We are siblings, xie and I, so I gave xer the short version. That you're the antichrist, that you love Earth and that you called off Armageddon, much to Gabriel's displeasure."

Adam nodded with an attempted solemnity that was foiled by Dog licking his face enthusiastically. "Raphael seems ok, I guess. Will you need to go soon?"

"For now," Michael said quietly. "But I will be back another time, if you want me to be."

"I do."

Raphael came back over. "Time to go, sis?"

She nodded.

Raphael hooked one hand through Michael's arm, nodded politely to Adam, then brought xer free hand down sharply and quipped, "Home, James!"

And with that, both Archangels were standing in the lobby between Heaven and Hell.

"My private stairs are over here," Raphael said, releasing Michael's arm, and heading for a side door. "This way you won't appear in your office and have to deal with Gabriel before you're ready."

Michael allowed herself a small, rueful smile over Raphael's perceptiveness, and followed.


	21. Reasons Why

"I need to have a word with Gabriel," Raphael muttered, a surprising amount of steel in xer voice. Or at least, surprising if you forgot that scalpels were made from the same steel as swords, and just as sharp. "Find out just _what_ he was thinking."

"I can tell you that," Michael replied, following Raphael up the steps from a human style clinic to Heaven's own.

"Oh?"

"Adam tacked it onto the prayer he sent me."

"Really?" Raphael stopped one step above Michael and held out an imperious hand.

Michael created a transcript and passed it over. Raphael read it, once in silence, then a second time punctuated with curse words from the demonic variant of Enochian.

Michael raised an amused eyebrow.

Her sibling snorted. "Yes, Michael, you're not the only one who has backchannels."

"So I've gathered."

Raphael turned back to look at her and traded the transcript for xer healer's staff. "Look. Demons aren't supposed to love. They do, most of them, in some form - platonic, romantic, aesthetic, it doesn't matter which - and so they keep it secret, if they can. And sometimes they get into - difficulties - that need my skills. I can wander downstairs almost as freely as upstairs these days, it just requires dressing to blend in." The snake unwound from Raphael's staff, and coiled itself around xer head like a pharoah's crown, while the tunic took on a dingy look. "It isn't like there's a strict colour code downstairs. You've met Hastur, right?"

Michael nodded, trying to absorb that supposedly tactless Raphael had had more secrets than she had ever guessed.

"Well, if Hastur cleaned that coat of his up, it wouldn't look much out of place on Heaven's coatrack, colour-wise. It's the grime and shabbiness that's the real marker, and even some demons get away without that."

"Anyway, Dagon and Beelzebub have this on-again, off-again, relationship, and Dagon has a habit of lovebites. Only she has a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth like a moray eel and when she gets carried away... Well, let's just say it was immensely embarrassing for Beelzebub to get discorporated because Dagon took too big a loving bite of zir throat. I think they made a cover story of fighting over something to explain it in an acceptable manner. Since then though, they've had me on speed-dial, and Beelzebub has a private lift between Heaven and Hell in zir quarters. Gabriel probably thinks the lift is for him though."

Michael remembered the lift. She'd been required to use it when she delivered the holy water so that none of the water in the lobby accidentally became blessed and blocked the demons from reaching Hell. "Gabriel?"

Raphael just grinned wickedly, and it was Michael's turn to swear like the soldier she was. She shook herself, composed herself, and tipped her head up towards the rest of the stairs. "Shall we continue, little sibling?"


	22. Silent Sigh

When they reached Michael's office, they found Gabriel standing rigid in the middle of it, his face still utterly blank and thoughtless. Michael sighed with resignation as close to silently as she could manage, closed the door behind them, and stood guard against it.

Raphael circled him, examining him from all angles. "What did you do to him, sis?"

"Command voice." Michael kept her tone blandly informative. She snapped her fingers, manifesting a chair immediately behind Gabriel and ordered with just a touch of command voice, "Sit."

He dropped onto the chair as if she had kicked his feet out from under him.

Raphael stumbled as xer knees caught the edge of it and buckled briefly. Xie gave her a look Michael had no difficulty interpreting as realisation and analysis.

She met it with a gently rueful smile. "I should have been more precise in my first order. I told him to wait here for further orders. At least one was required."

"Noted. Let him go, Michael, so I can work on him. Try not to hurt him, if possible."

Michael nodded and circled around to stand in front of Gabriel with Raphael at her shoulder. She drew a deep breath and spoke the required release formulation with a crisp precision that belied the rush of painful memories. "Gabriel. Your task is complete. Your time is your own." How many times had she said it to release a wounded or dying soldier to the healers? How often had she spoken the words knowing that the time left was measured in seconds or minutes? Too many to stop and count. And worse, so many she had released in training before the War had taken their time and her training and turned on Heaven with it.

She shook her head, forcing the memories away. Together, she and Raphael watched the life and sense come back to their younger brother's eyes and face, and hoped that this brother wouldn't go the way that their other brother had. And yet, if he did, they would give him this last gift and take him out themselves.

He erupted out of the chair straight at Michael. She simply twisted her corporation out of range of his fists. When he rounded on her a second time, furious words about her _incompetence_ and _treachery_ dripping from his mouth like poison, she kicked his feet out from under him for real.

He hit the floor with Michael's knee on his back and his arms twisted up where they would most hinder him bringing his wings out. It knocked the breath out of him, and the words with it, and Micheal lifted her head, and nodded for Raphael to begin.

Raphael crouched, and extended a glowing hand to rest on Gabriel's hair. Gabriel's unneeded breath shuddered and restarted and he closed his eyes for a long moment.

He said softly, "Let me up, big sis, I- I won't do anything more."

Michael glanced up to check with Raphael, who nodded once. She loosed him, rolling easily to her feet even in armour. When she was sure he wasn't going to attack again, she switched out the illusion and armour for her real, far more comfortable, suit.

Gabriel rose as far as his knees, and stayed there, staring into Raphael's eyes. They spoke in murmurs, and Michael backed off to the desk and tried not to listen.

She did look up when a whisper of power from Raphael put Gabriel to sleep. "Well?"

"Needs more work. But he won't Fall, I think."

She released a breath in another silent sigh, this time of relief. "Infirmary?"

"Yes. He won't heal at all if he keeps working, like walking on a sprained ankle rather than resting it."

Michael nodded, understanding.

Xie raised an eyebrow. "And what do we tell..." Xie flipped a hand at the door, indicating the rest of Heaven.

"You will blame it on me, of course." Michael felt her face shift, tired, and drained by the day. "It will hardly be the first time I've clouted someone too hard in spar - you're always complaining about it."

"True." Raphael snapped xer fingers, and Gabriel was strapped to a stretcher that floated at hip height. "I'll spread that tale then. Nobody will question it - and it isn't even a lie, really. He did want to fight you for a moment there."

Michael nodded, holding to her composure. Raphael shook xerself and the ditziness was back. Raphael's ditzy cheerfulness was never exactly fake - laughter is, after all, an excellent medicine for many things - but it was always deceptive. It hid the fact that the Healer was also scalpel sharp and intensely perceptive extremely well, to the point that Michael was pretty sure Raphael exaggerated it sometimes just for xer own protection. After all, it's as much a mask for xer real feelings as Michael's blandness was for hers, or Gabriel's too-wide smile for his.

Xie went out, stretcher bobbing obediently behind xer, and when someone asked, xie said only, "Oh, he was sparring Michael and she got through his guard harder than he expected. _Soldiers_."

The relaxation was all but tangible and Michael allowed herself a moment to feel it before she turned to her computer and the endless queue of reports. At least Adam was safe now.


	23. Know Your Aim

"What happened to Gabriel, Auntie Michael?" Adam asked, turning towards her on the bench, on one of her more routine visits.

Michael folded her hands in her lap. "Raphael says he got trapped in a loop of bad thoughts and couldn't escape without help." That was the short version. Raphael's actual explanation had involved swear words from a multitude of extinct languages, an extended rant on angelic metaphysics that didn't truly translate into English (but could be summarised along the lines that the world contorted itself to match an angel's expectations (if you expected a drink to stay hot, it did, if you expected a ball of infernal flame to behave like a car, it did, etc) so when you expected there to be no other solution, then you didn't find one even if you looked, and that only enforced the existing expectation of no solution and formed a self-reinforcing ever-deepening loop), and an extensive metaphor that paralleled what Gabriel had done to himself with certain self-harming coping mechanisms in humanity.

Adam said, "Like being convinced that the only way to fix the world is to tear it all down and start again?"

"Something of that sort."

"Oh." Adam pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them as he thought. "Why him? Why not you? If you don't mind me asking? You're both, um, angels."

"We are," Michael agreed. "But I am a soldier by nature, and he... is not."

"I thought soldiering was all yelling at people and doing what you're told?"

Michael allowed herself a slight smile, turning a little towards Adam herself. "In shows, perhaps. And true, soldiers need to be able to obey - there isn't time to argue about orders when you're under attack - but equally, soldiers have to be able to adapt on the spot to things going wrong. There is a saying that even the best plans only last until you engage the enemy."

Adam blinked at her, mild confusion on his face.

It was her turn to think, and she glanced around, searching for an example that he would understand. Finally she nodded at the nearby road. "For example," she said, "I could order you to cross the road. I could tell you to walk, not run, and not to stomp in the puddle on the other side. But I couldn't tell you what traffic will come down the road, nor at what speed, so you have to be the one to look both ways and decide when it's safe to cross, and where to actually put your feet when you avoid the puddle. Does that make more sense?"

Adam's face brightened. "Oh! Yes! Like when someone's mum gives us money and tells us to get icecream, and expects Brian to get chocolate because he always does, but the shop's out of chocolate, so he has to pick a different flavour when he gets there."

Michael nodded. "Yes, like that. But also, you need to be able to acknowledge that things don't always go the way you wanted or planned for. If there is no chocolate, then all the shouting and insisting in the world won't make the chocolate suddenly exist again." Miracles might, but miracles routinely did the impossible, and even they had limits.

Adam nodded too, looking more thoughtful. "How do you know what's a good order to give? I thought I did when my powers were whispering to me, but I really, really, didn't, and..." He stared down at his shoes for a long moment.

Michael waited patiently, outwardly serene.

At last, Adam finished in a mumble, "And I don't much want to go there again."

"It's hard to know sometimes," Michael agreed quietly. "And some orders are hard to give even when you know you must give them." She didn't regret (much) ordering her soldiers to stand and fight their fellows, those who had gone over to Lucifer's side. It had been necessary, and she had stood and fought with them, but the ache of losing them, losing him, would never fully go away. "Know the people you are giving orders to. Try not to give them orders they won't follow anyway, be willing to do the same thing yourself, and keep an eye on what your long term aim is. You have to trust those who follow you just as much as they have to trust you not to be careless with their lives."

Adam thought about that for a long moment, staring into the distance as if at something only he could see. "I don't know what my aim is," he admitted, finally. "I used to think, before any of this happened, that I could decide later. I was only a kid. And then... then I wanted my dad. My real dad, my human dad, because it was all too much. And I didn't want things to end. I didn't want to rule the world. I just wanted Tadfield. It isn't much, but... it's mine. It's my home. It's all I've ever really wanted, I guess, but it feels like... Now I know how much bad stuff goes on all over the world, I feel like I ought to want more. I ought to want to fix it. I ought to have bigger dreams and better dreams than one small village in Oxford. An' I feel guilty that I don't, sometimes. But this, all of this, is _home_! It's as much as I can cope with, but it doesn't feel like enough. And I don't know if it ever will, now." He swallowed, and looked up at her, something like trust and tears in his eyes. "Do you think I'll ever be enough?"

Michael couldn't mantle a protective wing over him, not out here in the open. She lifted an arm as an awkward substitute, and he leaned in under it, as hesitant as she was. "Adam," she said slowly, "not even the best commanders can do everything themselves, and the better ones know not to try. But you were enough, alone, to save the entire world from Heaven and Hell turning it into a battleground. You will always have that. You will always have been enough. Hold to that, if you can."


	24. Nothing's The Same

Michael's phone vibrated with a series of texts. She drew it out with one hand as she finished signing off a department's paperwork. Before, Gabriel would have done it, but as things were, Michael was having to fill in, and was therefore busier than ever.

The texts were from Adam. "The weather is awful. We're meeting at Anathema's instead. She says Raphael can come too, if you want."

Michael raised an eyebrow at the phone, but of course there was no response. She sighed silently, stretched, and rattled through the last of the paperwork. Sending it where it needed to be was the merest snap, and then she was out of her office and heading briskly for the infirmary and her sibling, to see if xie had time to join her. She already knew Raphael would want to.

***

Anathema opened the door to them, looked at the freezing rain dripping off their shared umbrella, and said warily, "You _may_ come in, if you _can_ come in."

Raphael glanced up at the horseshoe over the door, warding out demons and evil, then smiled and walked easily across the threshold, hands palm up in the oldest sign of peace. Michael folded the umbrella and did the same, though without the smile. They stood side by side, Michael in her usual suit, Raphael in a green jogging suit similar to Gabriel's, and a discreet wave of Raphael's hand dried them both.

Anathema nodded a greeting, and offered them bread and salt, the oldest binding to do no harm. Michael solumnly took a bit of bread, dipped it in the salt, and ate it. Raphael copied her, and some of Anathema's wariness eased.

A yelled, "Auntie Michael!" gave her just enough warning to brace for Adam's impact. "You got my message then?"

"I did, yes. And Raphael came too."

Adam stepped back and grinned, suddenly shyer. "Oh. Hello."

"Hello, Adam," Raphael said.

They gazed at each other for a long, wordless moment, and then Adam shook himself.

He glanced at the rest of the Them, turned back to Michael and asked, "Are we getting a sword lesson today?"

Anathema looked pointedly around the cramped room. "Is there even enough space for that?"

Michael took the hint. "Perhaps not. There are other options, I'm sure."

"Battle isn't entirely about swordplay," Raphael agreed. "Have you even covered triage yet, sis?"

"Triage?" Adam asked. "What's that?"

"Ah, so she hasn't. It's what happens after the fighting's over - working out who needs help the most. It's messy, sometimes," Raphael warned, "all blood and guts. I could...show you fake versions if you like. For practice."

Pepper's eyes lit up. So did Brian and Adam's.

Michael put out a hand and grabbed Raphael's arm. "No mercy," she said, adding quickly in Enochian, "If you talk about them having to kill each other, you'll tear open a lot of half-healed wounds."

Raphael's mouth tightened for the briefest of moments, then xie nodded an acknowledgement, flipped xer ponytail back over xer shoulder, and allowed xerself to be dragged off by the children.

Anathema regarded Michael. "I thought angels were all about mercy?"

"Battlefield mercy is a different thing," Michael said quietly. A quick, clean, discorporation was a mercy compared to a slow death, but it still included the release from duty, and that had the new rawness in it from Gabriel on top of the old ache.

"Ah. And Raphael?"

"Is a Healer. The Healer. Also my sibling. Xie/xer pronouns." Michael hesitated. "And yes, xie is related to Adam's not-father in the same way I am, but if there is a gender-neutral word for that in english, I don't know it."

Anathema took a step back, and turned, watching Adam enthusiastically tying Wensleydale's legs together under Raphael's eye. (Michael recognised it as a common field-splinting technique) "All my life," Anathema said, her voice low, clearly intended only for Michael's ears, "I was raised knowing I'd have to find the Great Beast, the Spawn of Satan, who was ending the world, and he turns out to be a normal boy." She folded her arms, an almost bitter tinge easing into her voice. "You'd never know by looking at him. He doesn't even seem to be affected by what he almost did, and now I-" She grimaced. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore."

Michael moved up beside her, hands clasped behind her, careful not to intrude on the woman's space. "He's more affected than you think," she said, her voice as low as Anathema's. "The thing about fighting, whether that be physical, mental, verbal, or emotional, is that you don't notice most of the wounds you receive until it's all over. When the fighting stops, you suddenly realise all the places it hurts, and that's when the triage and the healing begin." She allowed herself a sigh and a sideways glance. "You're not the only one at a loose end. I trained for this War for 6,000 years, and now..." She shrugged. "Nothing. An aftermath of silence and quiet repairs. And paperwork, of course. _Always_ , there is paperwork."

Anathema let out a brief snort of laughter at that.

Adam heard it, looked up at the pair of them standing there, and grinned back, empty sling hanging loose around his neck as he waved at a Wensleydale covered in bandages. "Look! I'm learning to mend stuff!"


	25. Blaze of Light

"Do you fight too?" Pepper asked Raphael. She fidgeted with the practice bandages wrapping her arms, as if she couldn't decide whether she should be the healer or the patient.

"Not the way Michael does," Raphael said, with a shrug. "But as a last resort, or in defence of my patients..."

Michael added, from her spot by the door, "Raphael wields a staff, not a sword."

Pepper thought about that. "You could spar together! If you came back when the weather was better."

Michael raised an eyebrow at Raphael, knowing full well how much her sibling disliked sparring. In otherspace, Raphael's top left wing made a rude gesture at her in reply.

Pepper looked from one angelic face to the other. "Are you holding back because I'm a girl? That's-"

Raphael cut her off with a sharp gesture. "No," xie said. "I am, first and foremost, a healer."

Michael nodded. "It is not a wise choice to anger someone who knows  _ exactly _ how to take you apart and rebuild you anew. But fighting is rarely something a healer does by choice."

"I dislike causing myself extra work," Raphael added dryly, though xer smile was cheerful enough. "But yes, Pepper, I do have those skills. I - prefer not to use them."

"Then why use them at all?"

Xer gaze flicked ever so briefly to Anathema and then to Adam, before xie addressed Pepper directly. "There is a difference between defying other people's expectations because that's what you want to do, and denying yourself something because it matches those expectations and you feel you shouldn't reinforce them. Denying part of yourself only hurts you, in the end." Xie shrugged. "It is something I need to be able to do, but it is a duty, not a pleasure. I have found a balance between the two that works for me."

Michael quirked a tiny smile. "Mostly because I  _ will  _ drag you away for downtime when necessary, little sib. Admit it." 

Raphael just grinned, wide and open. "And I  _ will _ protest every step of the way. You know it."

"I do," Michael agreed, and found Anathema staring at them both.

She said, "You sound so human sometimes. I wish I could look at you properly."

"Properly?" Raphael echoed.

Michael explained tersely, "She has the Sight."

"Ah."

Adam lifted his head, watching them all with a thoughtful look on his face. "You never did explain why it was a bad idea, only that it wasn't polite."

Raphael gave Michael a long, level, look, and got to xer feet. "Now might be a good time to do so then, while I'm here."

Michael winced internally. In otherspace, the tips of her upper wings dipped apologetically downward. She drew a breath that she didn't need. "My apologies. I should have been clearer. It is not so much that it is rude for you to look at us, so much as it would be rude for us to not warn you what we are." Her jaw tightened and she clasped her hands behind her back, shifting into the position she used for giving reports. "You did, after all, require a binding commitment of us to do no harm. People who have the Sight tend to have unpleasant reactions to looking at us in that way."

Anathema folded her arms tightly. "Such as?"

Raphael clasped xer own hands behind xer back, standing as straight as Michael was. "It varies a great deal, depending on both the person and who they are looking at. For us..." Xie and Michael exchanged glances.

They both shone very bright in their true forms, focused around crystal - Michael with fire and a crystal sword, Raphael with pure light and crystal lenses that allowed xer to inspect someone in every dimension.

Michael said, "Dazzled. At minimum. I have known people who were blind for a week or more after close inspection of - someone."

"I can heal that, though," Raphael added, helpfully.

Movement in the corner of Michael's eye resolved into the Them drawing into a tight group when she glanced that way. She offered them a slight, reassuring, smile before her attention snapped back to Anathema.

Anathema's face was set. "I need to know," she said softly. "It's not an attack on you. I just-"

"The fewer uncertainties in an uncertain world, the better?"

"Yes!"

Michael sighed. "Very well," she said, but in otherspace, her wings wrapped themselves around her, muting the bright blaze as much as they could.

She sensed Raphael doing the same.

Brian asked, "Can we look too?"

"Do you have the Sight?"

"Well, no, but-"

Wensleydale butted in, "Actually, Adam might have it. His eyes go odd when he's using his power and he sees things we don't."

"I'm fine," Adam said. "One at a time, right?"

Raphael nodded.

Anathema nodded back, closed her eyes, opened them again. She turned ashen pale as the colour drained from her face, and her eyes and mouth went wide, hardly blinking, hardly breathing, hardly moving.

That, Michael knew, was a bad sign for humans, who, unlike angels and demons, actually needed to breathe. She said, "Excuse me," and broke Anathema's line of sight to them by physically lifting her a few inches and turning her around so that she faced the other way.

The woman shuddered, and gasped out, "I think I'm going to be sick."

Raphael miracled a bucket into her hands just in time.


End file.
